1 in 5 Workers in Wrong Job

Research from the Skills Commission reveals that 21% of Britain’s workers are in a job that does not make the best use of their skills.

A further 41% of workers say they have had a previous job that has not made the best use of their skillsets.

The news comes ahead of the publication of the Skills Commission’s info, advice & guidance inquiry and reveals a vital need for good long-term careers advice in the UK.

Weighing up the figures for workers being in a job that does not utilise their skills amounts to an average of 4 years and 10 months wasted.

Only 4% of workers who escaped such a job relied on formal careers advice to get their next role, whilst 59% of workers still in the wrong role believe good careers advice would help them get a more suitable job. 47% of workers in the general working population feel that good careers advice would help to improve their career prospects.

Other statistics gleaned from the survey indicate that:

65% of all people have, at some time in their life, received formal careers advice.

of 18-24 year olds, the percentage that have received careers advice from institutions is:

27% from Connexions

15% from Jobcentre Plus

63% from College or University

Of all adults:

6% of people have received careers advice from Learndirect

13% have had advice from Jobcentre Plus

41% from college or uni

Commenting on how useful workers found their career advice to be:

66% found this formal advice very or fairly useful,

7% said it was not useful at all.

As for the alternative sources of informal advice the findings showed:

41% – friends (76% of 18-24 year olds)

37% -the internet (61% of 18-24s)

32% – parents (70%of 18-24s)

25% – other family members (47% of 18-24s)

The findings show that Brits feel dissatisfied with their work, their skills are underutilised and theat there is a massive need for high quality formal careers advice.

“In the new world order, informal sources of advice from social networking sites, mentors and employers will become increasingly important. These results highlight how essential a mix of formal and informal sources of advice are to the public.”

Notes:

All the figures are from a YouGov Plc online survey of 2087 working adults between 11th and 13th March 2008. The figures have been weighted to represent all British adults aged 18+.

At the time of publication there are 44,020,057 adults aged 18+ in the UK. Some 27,292,435 (62%) have been in or are still in a job that does not best utilise their skills.

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